Tale of the tee: Joe, the Motorists’ Friend

The auto parts chain, based in Harrisburg,

operated from 1928 to 1981.

By the time I arrived in Pennsylvania in 1991, auto accessories retailer Joe, the Motorists’ Friend already had traveled a decade into the sunset.

I don’t remember coming across the company’s name — one of the greatest in retail history — in my years as a business reporter in York. Indeed, my acquaintance with Joe is fairly recent.

But I’ve discovered that many people still have fond memories of the company all these decades later.

We like nothing better than to celebrate cool brands of yore, as we are doing with our new Joe, the Motorists’ Friend Tee.

It’s an all-cotton black shirt, the Joe logo printed in red and cream ink. Those seem to have been official company colors based on an old Joe, the Motorists’ Friend catalog and a tin spare bulb kit we found on eBay.

It’s our first design that references somewhere outside of Pennsylvania: The Harrisburg-based chain also had stores in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

It seems especially appropriate to debut our Joe tee during the holiday season given that the company was synonymous with Santa Claus.

‘Cut rate auto accessory’

Company founder Joseph R. Stine was a 1918 graduate of Franklin and Marshall Academy, a college prep and boarding school that operated in conjunction with Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster.

Stine spent eight years as automobile editor of the Patriot and Evening News newspapers in Harrisburg, “and in that capacity came into intimate contact with all branches of the automotive field,” according to The Evening News.

Joe, the Motorists’ Friend debuted on March 16, 1928 at 9 S. Market Square, Harrisburg, billed as a “cut rate auto accessory, tire and radio store.”

A company catalog carried the slogan, “See Joe and save dough.” Stine took out big newspaper ads offering everything from tires and batteries to seat covers and “peep-peep horns.”

By 1946, the company had 14 stores: eight in Pennsylvania and three each in Maryland and Virginia.

That year, the company opened a 36,000-square-foot general warehouse and executive offices at 3101 N. Seventh St., Harrisburg, an accomplishment featured in a full-page ad in the Harrisburg Evening News. It was headlined, “A Tree Grows in Harrisburg.”

“The only thing on the wall of the boss’s office in the new building is a framed dollar bill. It is the first dollar spent by the first customer on the opening day of the Harrisburg Store.

“This dollar was spent by a personal friend who wanted to have the honor of being Joe’s first customer. Nevertheless, in spite of the great friendship, the customer bought a nationally known product in a sealed package at a greatly reduced price.”

Just as the number of stores grew, so did the array of products. Added were radios, toys, household appliances, sporting goods and clothing, men’s work clothing and sportswear.

Photo courtesy West Shore Historical Society

With a 1960 acquisition, Joe, the Motorists’ Friend grew to 33 stores, making it “one of the largest privately held auto chains in the country,” according to the Lykens, Pa., Register.

A 1975 store opening in Bellefonte, Pa., brought Joe to 38 stores from Philipsburg, Pa., to Staunton, Va. The 7,000-square-foot Bellefonte store was set up “supermarket style,” with merchandise in tiers starting 12 inches from the floor. The service side featured two hydraulic lifts.

But the retailing environment was changing, presenting an existenial threat to Joe. By spring 1980, Joe (now operating under the founder’s son, Joseph K. Stine) filed for bankruptcy reorganization, closing five Pennsylvania stores but prepared to soldier on with 18 locations and a new approach in the face of bigger retail competitors.

“Probably cut, either entirely or in part,” according to the Sunday News in Lancaster, “will be Joe’s stock of TV sets, sporting goods and toys. The store will continue to carry, and probably beef up, its supply of automobile accessories.”

The filing, a company attorney said, “definitely does not mean that Joe’s is going out of business.” Instead, it would provide “breathing room.”

But Joe never got off life support. By September 1981, plagued by “continually dwindling sales,” the Carlisle Sentinel reported, Joe announced its liquidation plan.

A newspaper ad announced a series of all-day auctions at stores in Hanover and Lewistown, Pa., and Cumberland, Md. Selling off everything from auto parts to toys to sporting goods would begin at 9:30 a.m. and continue “until store is bare.”

‘You saw Santa at Joe’

Joe’s demise affected not just its adult customers but children, for whom the stores and the company were a conduit to Santa Claus.

Stores hosted Santa, and Joe brought Santa to children via the airwaves, sponsoring “At the North Pole with Santa Claus” on the radio in the 1930s and 1940s.

From a December 1933 edition of the Intelligencer Journal in Lancaster:

“For two weeks, under the auspices of Joe, the Motorists’ Friend, Santa has been stopping his work in his North Pole toy shop and broadcasting through WGAL [radio] every day at 5:15 and every day Santa read[s] his mail over the air.”

That continued into the TV age, as recounted by one YouTuber who remembered Santa arriving at Joe, The Motorists’ Friend stores via helicopter in the 1960s.

Children would visit Santa, himself seated on a stage, and receive a pin with a red ribbon and bell attached to it.

You can still find Joe’s Santa buttons on eBay,

more than 40 years after the company closed.

“You’d wear that all over the place,” the YouTuber said, “so you could tell people that you saw Santa at Joe, the Motorists’ Friend.

“And then, to top it off, every night, Monday through Friday, he would have a freakin’ half-an-hour show. Kids would come in, talk to him, he would have the Clean Plate Club, right? It was just wonderful watching Santa Claus as a little kid.”

You can view part of a 1970 TV broadcast here.

In the Facebook group Remember When in Harrisburg, Anthony F. remembered walking from Allison Hill to Joe’s store.

“At the age of five or six it was a true joy to get the Santa Claus pin, the one with a ribbon and a bell, to wear on your winter coat. Of course that pin was only available at Joe, the Motorists’ Friend.”

Fond memories such as these suggest that Joe was more than a friend. He was like family.